


A Pearl

by Rag



Series: trash ship week [6]
Category: Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Abuse, Body Horror, Canon Era, Consent Issues, F/F, Fusion, Homeworld Gems - Freeform, Homeworld is Horrible, Rape/Non-con Elements, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-31
Updated: 2017-07-31
Packaged: 2018-12-09 05:48:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,692
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11662872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rag/pseuds/Rag
Summary: Yellow Diamond makes her Pearls fuse to cheer up her sister. That the fusion is sick makes it all the more fun.





	A Pearl

**Author's Note:**

> day 6 : intimacy

Yellow Diamond is coming. Blue’s Gems prepare with the little time they’re given. Usually they have a few days, today they have a few hours. Blue Pearl watches them scramble to get the place in order, glad that her Diamond isn’t making her join them. She’s never been very good at standing up for herself, and in this kind of a midst, she imagines she’d be trampled into the ground and crushed under their big, frantic feet. But her Diamond doesn’t want her down there with them. She keeps her in her lap and pats her head softly, murmuring to her.

“She’s upset. It’s probably about… her.” Blue Pearl feels her eyes well up with tears. She wishes she could comfort her Diamond. There’s so much sadness in her. But the tears don’t fall. Blue Diamond takes a deep breath and swallows, and her Pearl feels the tears recede. “The Rebels are active again, little Pearl.” The tears fall down Blue Pearl’s cheeks, staining her hair wet. “Why won’t they just _die_ already?”

Blue Pearl doesn’t respond. She learned millennia ago that unless she explicitly states otherwise, Blue Diamond doesn’t want her to respond when she talks, she just wants to talk at her. One of Blue Diamond’s tears falls and splashes down Blue Pearl’s arm.

“Wasn’t it enough to kill her?” Her voice is barely more than a whisper. “My… sister… and they won’t stop, they just keep stirring up trouble… all for those _stupid_ creatures. Why did she have to be assigned there? She was too young. She was barely a hundred years… when… oh, Pink… It wasn’t fair, Pearl. It wasn’t. Was it, Pearl?”

“No, my Diamond.”

“They deserve to die. Don't they?”

“Yes, my Diamond.”

“Maybe Yellow will be able to wipe them off the starscape. She’s always been faster to act than I have. And maybe that’s exactly what we need to actually get this taken care of.”

Blue Pearl nods non-committally. She hears some hubbub from the other side of the hall.

“Yellow Diamond’s ship is unboarding,” a harried-looking Agate says.

“Thank you. Direct her here,” Blue Diamond tells her.

“Yes, my Diamond.” The Agate bows deeply and scurries away.

Yellow Diamond comes in the room a few moments later. Blue Diamond rushes to hug her. 

"Tell me, Yellow. What are they doing?" She guides Yellow Diamond to her throne, and the two of them sit on their gigantic seats.

“More of that disgusting _fusion._  White’s stupid defected Pearl and that disgusting _Garnet_ and some runty little Amethyst all mashed together like some.. some… some _thing!_ And _apparently_ , that was enough to throw off our Peridot _and_ our highest-ranking Jasper.” Yellow Diamond’s words get angrier as she goes on. “Both. Of. Whom. Have. Gone. _Rogue_!” She slams her fist on the arm of the chair. Both of the Pearls flinch as the ground under them shakes. “I want to kill them. We can do it, wipe the entire planet off the globe. We’ll launch the cluster tomorrow. It’s sooner than we planned, but we can-“

“Oh, Yellow, it’s just- it’s too _horrible,_ I can’t…”

Blue Pearl sees tears fill up Yellow Pearl’s eyes before her own vision is blurred with thick, fat tears. She hears Blue Diamond sob above her and quickly wipes her tears away.

“Oh, Blue, don’t cry,” Yellow Diamond says, her voice soft and scared.

“I can’t, Yellow, it’s too…”

Yellow Diamond snaps. “Pearls. Distract her.”

Both Pearls bow and start to dance a simple allemande together. Blue Pearl feels her eyes cloud with more tears.

“Something better, come on,” Yellow Diamond says sharply.

Blue Pearl tries something new, a faster little jig-minuet fusion Blue Diamond had been having her work on, while she sees Yellow Pearl start something jazzy as she starts to sing some little ditty about a swift victory and indomitable power.

It’s not enough.

“Useless, both of you.”

Blue Pearl stops and looks down. She wonders if she should try something else, but the shame is making it hard to think. Failing her Diamond, or Yellow Diamond, is unacceptable.

“Yellow, I don’t want to see them dance,” Blue Diamond wails. “I want Pink. I want her back.”

Blue Pearl coughs as the tears block her nose from breath. She adjusts her stance so that the tears fall on the ground instead. Blue Diamond has only cried this hard a few times before.

“I want them to stop rubbing that disgusting _fusion_ in our faces like this. Why won’t they die, Yellow? Why won’t they just die?”

“We’re working on that, dear.” Yellow Diamond rubs Blue Diamond’s shoulder and kisses the side of her head. She looks over her shoulder at the Pearls, and Blue Pearl feels a chill run down her back as she sees Yellow Diamond’s expression shift. She looks excited, giddy, and maybe a little angry.

“Why don’t we make _them_ fuse, Blue?”

“What?” Blue Diamond sounds confused, but the tears stop falling.

“Do it, Pearls. Fuse.” She claps.

Blue Pearl has never fused before, and she would be shocked if Yellow Pearl had. Pearls weren’t made to fuse. Pearls weren’t made to know anything about fusing, besides what they’d picked up from secondhand conversations had in their presence.

“H-how, my Diamond?” Blue Pearl asks cautiously. She looks over to see that Yellow Pearl is barely containing her fear – her eyes wide, her muscles tight and her frame shaking ever so lightly. Probably too lightly for Yellow Diamond to see, from all the way up there.

“How should _I_ know? Dancing is involved. Dance together.”

Blue Pearl tentatively reaches out. She looks at Yellow Pearl through her bangs and tries to communicate her thoughts to her.

_I don’t want to do this, either._

_I’m scared, too._

_I don’t know how._

_I don’t want this._

She tells herself that Yellow Pearl understands, at least in part, and she dances with her. She takes her hand and leans over so that their Gems touch lightly. There’s a flash of light, and then Blue Pearl feels Yellow Pearl inside of her. There’s too much inside of her. There’s too much _person,_ too much stuff. There’s too many people. She feels like she’ll burst from inside herself. She falls to her knees and feels the sting of it on three of them, not two, and looks down to see that she has a broken, stunted forth leg hanging off of one knee.

Breathing is hard enough, staying in this form instead of bursting from within is harder, but her Diamond (whose?) is speaking, and she _has_ to focus. It’s what she was made to do.

“Oh my _God!_ Blue, do you see this?!”

“It’s disgusting, Yellow. It’s horrible.”

“It’s _hilarious_ , is what it is. Pearl, dance for us.”

Pearl tries to dance. Her legs move in different directions, trying to perform different dances. One set attempts a tango. The other tries for a swing. She falls over and hits her face on the cold marble floor. Yellow Diamond guffaws over her, and she hears Blue Diamond chortle.

“What are you _doing_ ,” she hears, out of her own mouth, but it’s wrong.

“Trying to dance.”

“Follow my lead, idiot!”

“Oh, Blue, listen to them, this is _incredible_.”

Pearl (who is she now? What is she? She looks down at herself with one set of eyes, realizing that she has two, one of which is shadowed by her jagged bangs. Her skin is mottled now. Blue, yellow and green in ugly, discordant patches with no rhyme or aesthetic coherency. She’s wrong, she’s wrong and she shouldn’t exist. There’s not enough room for her in this _thing_.)

“Are they _supposed_ to look like that? That can’t be what took down Pink.”

Tears in her eyes. So many eyes, at least five. Where did they all come from? Too many eyes and feet and hands. She chokes on the fat tears as she tries to dance for her Diamonds. She tries to pay attention to what they’re saying.

“Look at its Gem, on its chest. It’s all gnarled and wrong. It’s sick.”

“Oh. Oh, goodness, that looks painful. Maybe we should stop them.”

“No, no, they’re fine. They’ll be fine. You’re fine, right, Pearl?”

Pearl tries to nod. She hurts all over, but most of the sharp, stabbing pain emanates from the Gem on her chest. Her Pearl is the exact same size as it usually is, but splashed with shifting colors and phasing in and out of blue and yellow and green. When she looks at it, she feels like she can’t breathe. She looks away. She feels one of her arms start to dissemble and watches in horror from one of her extra eyes as it falls apart and is absorbed back into her torso. Blue Diamond shrieks, and Yellow Diamond gasps.

“Oh, you’re absolutely hideous! Sing for me.”

“Yellow! What is _wrong_ with you?!”

“Can you really tell me you’re not enjoying this?”

Pearl hopes that her Diamond argues, and tells them to unfuse. She misses being her own Gem. She misses feeling like she belonged in her body. She misses not being so afraid.

Instead, Blue Diamond laughs. “Goodness, you’re right, Yellow. It’s just so wrong!”

“That’s why it’s so _fun_.”

Pearl tries to sing. She usually has perfect pitch, but now every note is automatically discordant, harmonized at a gross half-step increment with her two voices. Blue Diamond laughs, and Pearl’s many eyes run over with tears.

This is funny to her. Her pain is funny to her Diamond. She feels Yellow Pearl realize it at the same moment as she does.

She hates this.

She wants to die.

She wants to join the rebels, if for no other reason than to never have to do this again.

_How could you?!_

_You do to, that was you, I would never think such a thing of my own volition. I love my Diamond, I love her, do you not love your-_

“Good _God_ , what is that song you’re trying to sing?”

Pearl feels her organs shift inside of her and resists the urge to vomit.

“The Ballad of the Homeworld Fleet,” she responds. Her voice crackles in and out, like from a radio with only the weakest signal.

Yellow Diamond cackles. “Oh, God! I _never_ would have guessed.”

Blue Diamond laughs along with her, so hard she can barely breathe. “Yellow, God, Yellow,” she gasps. “We have to stop. Oh, we have to stop. Look at it.”

Pearl burns with shame. She knows what they’re looking at. Her disgusting form and its gross limbs flickering in and out of existence. She feels an eye materialize on one of her arms. For a few seconds, she looks around with it. The vantage point is nauseating and wrong. And then it blinks away, absorbed back into her freakish body.

She feels like she’s constantly in motion, her overboiled self roiling and churning from within. And her Diamond is watching her. Her Diamond is disgusted with her for it. She’s been tainted by this. Even though it’s making her Diamond feel better, it’s making Yellow laugh and Blue stop crying, she feels horrible. Selfish. Defective. God, she’s defective, she’s going to be shattered.

“I still need my Pearl after this, you know. I like this one, she’s not replaceable.”

Blue Pearl swells with pride at the same time she feels Yellow Pearl burn with shame and jealousy when Yellow Diamond doesn’t return the sentiment. Instead:

“I’ll never understand your attachment to the thing.”

Blue Pearl feels sick just thinking about that (or is she absorbing Yellow Pearl’s emotions into herself?) She feels Yellow Pearl try to close herself off, practically hears her hurling curses and swears at her. _Leave. Me. Alone. Don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me, don’t talk to me, it doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter, I don’t matter-_

Blue Pearl sees Yellow Diamond threatening to shatter her Pearl and get a new one instead, one that’s worth the puny minerals it takes to make her. She feels the fear that Yellow Pearl feels feels every time she fails to predict the most minor of her Diamond’s mood changes or preferences. _Please don’t shatter me, I’ll do better next time._

_I’m so sorry-_

_Get out of my head. Don’t look at that. Leave me alone. Leave me alone!!! I don’t want to be in your body. I don’t want this. I hate you. I despise you. You’re weak. You’re puny and milquetoast and soft and stupid and Yellow Diamond would crush you in a moment-_

_Stop. I don’t care about you. Stop talking about me._

She’s lying. Blue Pearl is lying. She cares deeply, she wants to help. There’s no point in lying, because she knows Yellow Pearl can feel it inside of her, as if it’s her own thoughts. There are too many thoughts, in one little brain, she can’t contain it all-

_Please don’t tell her, please, I don’t want to die-_

“Are you _deaf_ , you stupid Pearl? Blue told you to unfuse.”

And the next thing Blue Pearl knows, she feels cloyingly sweet relief wash over her. She feels better than she’s felt in centuries. Like an impossible weight has been lifted. In her own body again. Two arms, legs, eyes, and a form that remains solid. A Gem that can breathe.

Tears sting her eyes. She can’t imagine what about this is so sad to Blue Diamond, but she lets herself cry. It feels good. She hears the fast, hard footsteps of Yellow Pearl clicking away, far away, over to wait at her Diamond’s orders.

“Oh, darling Pearl, was it so bad?” she hears her Diamond say, her voice far too calm and composed. She looks up to see that her Diamond, Blue Diamond, isn’t crying. She freezes in fear. Showing this weakness, this individuality, to her Diamond is _dangerous_.

“N-no, my Diamond. I am… overwhelmed.”

“Oh, darling,” Blue Diamond says softly, and Blue Pearl tries to stop shaking. Calm down, calm down, this _isn’t safe_.

“Oh, is she defective? You know we can make you another.”

Blue Pearl wants to scream. She would run, but she wouldn’t make it out the door.

This is it, then.

“Yellow, would you shut up? I like this one. Don’t listen to her, Pearl.”

She tries to smile.

“ _My_ Pearl is doing just fine. That’s all I’m saying.”

“Good for _your_ Pearl, Yellow.”

Blue Diamond picks up Blue Pearl and sets her on her leg. She brushes her hair softly with her fingertip. It soothes her, and she stops shaking, even though she feels all their eyes on her like needles in her skin.

“That was very funny, though.”

Yellow Diamond laughs to herself. “Wasn’t it, though? We’ll have to do that again. What a freaky little creature.”

“Thank you, Yellow.”

“Of course.

“It’s too quiet. Sing something, Pearl,” Yellow Diamond says, with a harshness in her voice that Blue Pearl understands is not meant for her.

Yellow Pearl sings. Her voice shakes slightly, but if the Diamonds notice it, they don’t comment. But Blue Pearl notices. And she notices that Yellow Pearl refuses to look at her.

“Good. Keep singing.” She levels her piercing gaze on Blue Pearl. “You, too.” Blue Pearl nods, salutes and joins along with the other Pearl. It’s easier to harmonize now. “Blue. Are you ready to discuss the plans now?”

“Yes.”

They discuss over the Pearls’ soft songs. Then Yellow Diamond and her Pearl leave.

Blue Diamond keeps Blue Pearl on her lap and softly tells her about the plans, and how she feels about them, and how she feels about her sister and Homeworld and the Earth. Things Blue Pearl will never see, will never know the repercussions of, unless they make her Diamond feel better. She nods and agrees at the appropriate moments to keep her Diamond talking.

More than anything else, Blue Pearl hopes two things. She hopes, because she doesn’t believe with any degree of confidence that they’ll be true.

She hopes she never has to fuse with anyone else ever again.

And she hopes that Yellow Pearl is okay.


End file.
